Meraki MS Switches Reviews

Our Meraki MS Switches are deployed in different environments. Some are in a bank, some are in a dental office, and some are in a business office in downtown Chicago. 

The most valuable feature is the dashboard because it makes it easy to manage all of the switches. It's easy to turn them up and get it configured.

Sometimes the controller in the cloud that controls the access points does not have the most accurate information. There is sometimes a glitch in keeping the management controller that is in the cloud up to date.

I have been using Meraki MS Switches for 12 years now. 

Meraki MS Switches are stable. 

Meraki MS Switches are scalable to an extent. I think it is scalable if you are using it for residential Wi-Fi or office Wi-Fi where there is not a lot of complex configuration, I think it will scale well.

Initial setups are straightforward for us. We deploy in many different environments. Our deployment in the dental office took a few hours. Our deployment of about 200 APs in a residential retirement community was probably a month because it was 200 APs and a lot of integration. In other words, deployment can take anywhere from a few hours to four weeks depending on the size of the installation. 

On a scale of one to five, one being the cheapest and five being the most expensive, I would rate the cost of Meraki MS Switches a three. 

My advice to anyone looking to deploy Meraki MS Switches is: be aware of the fact that you cannot activate it without a license. It does not work. There are benefits tied to the licensing. The licensing provides you with maintenance or replacement, which means that it covers you from a couple of different perspectives. The licensing is multipurpose.

We primarily use the solution for switches. 

The switches are great. The basic features are sufficient. 

The stability is good.

You can scale the product.

Support has been very good. 

The solution offers very good integration potential.

The pricing is fair and offers good value. 

Since 2019, we have not encountered any problems with the switches. On our servers, there are occasionally some bugs or some problems with some features that need Meraki support; however, everything works well with Meraki Switches. 

We aren't missing any features. 

We've used the solution since 2019. We've used it for a few years now. 

For the most part, the solution is stable. Upgrades are typically great. It doesn't crash or freeze. It is reliable. 

We do not have issues with the scalability. It's very easy to expand. 

There are more than 20 companies using the solution, however, I don't have details about how many individual users are at each company.

As we have Cisco Premier, when we have to call them, Meraki is very fast in solving our tickets and definitely was very fast in their support. It's very, very good. We can call them directly and get immediate help.

We pay for the solution on a yearly basis. We pay a standard fee and there are no additional costs.

While it may not be the cheapest, for the quality you receive, the price is very good. 

We are resellers. 

We are a Cisco Premier Partner, and we're trying to do Meraki certifications. It's in progress.

We provide Meraki to our customers, and it's working well.

Meraki's on the cloud. All solutions that are using SD-WAN is managed on the cloud.

Almost all our customers here in the Madagascar area are 49 or 24FP versions of Meraki MS 210. It's suitable for all our customers here.

We recommend the solution. 

It's reliable and I advise others to use it. If they are using Meraki Switches, I recommend them to use also the firewalls and access points. They work well with everything in one dashboard. It's better to pay and have the firewall, switches, and access points together to get a good view on the dashboard and the management. It's better to use Meraki. It is very, very stable.

I'd rate the switches a nine out of ten.

The most valuable features are ease of use and configuration. It has a cloud-based configuration that makes it easy.

They've added some improvements to firmware update scheduling where you can stagger the updates, which is the biggest advantage. Prior to that, you could not stagger updates when you have data center switches or stacks, which was difficult. They've now added some improvements for more update processes to stagger devices, which has greatly improved my happiness. It is in beta right now.

They tend to have some weird issues with fiber uplinks.

I have been using these switches for six years. We have the latest version.

They are stable. The only issues I've encountered are with fiber uplinks.

I don't have any scalability issues, but there are certain things for which I probably wouldn't use it, such as storage area, networking, etc. For local LAN, it shouldn't have any scalability issues.

It's usually pretty good. It tends to lack when we run into some bug issues. They take time.

It was straightforward. For maintenance, one to two people are enough for about 200 users.

It depends on what type of equipment you have and other things. We're about $17,000 a year.

I would rate these switches an eight out of ten.

I am using it to put it in a secure end-to-end solution in my IT lab. I am using MX65. I have got three Meraki solutions. I have the switch, the access point, and the appliance itself.

Being able to look at every port and see what it is connected to is very useful. Everything seems to be running really well. They've got everything covered.

They have a really cool mounting system at the bottom and an access point that you can use to level up your device. It is kind of cool.

It would be great if they can get the price down for small businesses.

I have been using this solution for three years.

It is rock solid.

They are after a certain market, that is, the small business market. You wouldn't put a Meraki solution at an enterprise level. That's not the market that they want to go after. You would probably scale up to full Cisco for that.

They've always been really good. To be able to get somebody at the end of the line is the real advantage of having a subscription-based solution. I had to wait for maybe three minutes at the most.

You can initiate a service request from the device itself, which is something that not too many companies do. When you're logged into the interface, you can see who your rep is. You have full connection to support. If you want to learn how to configure VLAN, you just click on the support ticket, it generates a ticket. It figures out your number and other information and sends an inquiry ticket with Meraki, and they call you back.

I have used a lot of stuff at the lower end, such as SonicWall, Linksys, and TP-link. I have also used the actual Cisco stuff, but it just never worked together. I haven't worked with Ubiquiti, but I believe that they've got a similar product. I haven't been hands-on with Fortinet, but I understand that they have a quite selective setup as well.

In terms of security and intelligence, Linksys and other such solutions tend to be more for the home business, so they are not really competing with each other. Ubiquiti competes with them, but I haven't worked with Ubiquiti.

Its setup is very easy. A kid could do this stuff. It is cloud-based. There is one interface for all three devices. They are all tied together under a web console.

I configured it myself, and I am not a real techie guy.

You need one person for its maintenance. I pretty much do it all myself.

They can get the price down for small businesses. The way I bought it, I paid hardly anything, and I got all my licensing with it.

The firewall appliance is around $900, and the switches are around $150. This is for the device itself. For licensing, I signed at $70 or something like that for the switch. Technical Support is included in this.

I wouldn't try and manage any piece of Cisco equipment by itself. You wouldn't want to just buy a Meraki Switch. You wouldn't be able to access it the same way as your firewall. It is only when you start off with an MS cloud appliance, you can add on the Meraki stuff.

I would rate Meraki MS Switches a nine out of ten. They are a good rig.

The general use case is just as a unified platform for APs and switches. In our particular case, we brought on a client that had firewalls, access points, and had a need for switches to all run on one platform.

Where they are in the market and the market segment with their cloud management is an impressive aspect of the solution that originally lead ut to the solution. The maturity with their cloud management is really great.

The technical support is quite good.

The initial setup is straightforward.

In terms of the switches, generally, we have some stability problems. There are general stability issues with them. It's been inconsistent for a couple of years. It's not really based on any firmware. 

Switches that are in production and running will stop responding. And so we have to reboot the switches.

We've been using the solution for six years at this point.

The stability of the solution isn't ideal. We've had a lot of problems with the switches. They are unstable and unreliable. We need to reboot them often.

I haven't seen any issues with scalability. Our environment is relatively small, about 20-25 offices, and therefore we haven't tried to expand the solution.

The support of the solution has always been very good. They're very knowledgable and responsive. We're satisfied with their level of attention.

The initial setup is not complex. It's straightforward.

We are a Cisco partner. Our previous solutions were all Cisco-based, however, we were just using the traditional Cisco 2900 Series Switches. We still have a lot of those in production.

As far as switches go, it's a good product. As long as it makes a good fit for the customer, the only advice is to not let the maturity of the product dictate the need to implement.

There are a lot of solutions out there now that are a little bit cheaper, and that might meet a company's desired price point. Many other products also provide the same level of functionality. Don't just buy it because of the name.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten overall.

We are partners of Meraki and operate as a service provider for Meraki switches, notably the Meraki MS Series 410, 420, and 450. Our responsibility is to help customers deploy these solutions, which are always situated on-premises.

The main use cases for our customers include end-user connectivity, IP telephony, and security purposes such as for the cameras and access points.

The top feature of Meraki MS switches for me is Layer 7 application visibility. Another positive in general is that you don't need to set up a console to the switch itself; it dials in to a single dashboard where you can completely manage all your network devices.

In my opinion, there's room for improvement cost-wise. With Meraki's licensing terms, you're required to pay an annual licensing fee, which can be for a one-year license or perhaps a five-year license. But if you analyze the costs involved, there are huge expenses incurred as far as the licensing is concerned. It's very costly.

When you see the cost of the device and the cost of the license, they're almost the same. So let's say, for example, a device costs $4,200 and you go for a three or four year license, it will cost you the same. And that's for everything; for the wireless, the switches, the firewalls, everything.

Of course, the total costs depend on several factors, including the customer requirements, the service provider, and the service integrators (which may have their own partnership bias). With Cisco partners, there are gold level partners which will have different discounts to the silver partners, for instance. Given these factors, I always try to get the maximum discount from the vendor so I can offer a solution to my customers at the lowest margin.

Apart from costs, one improvement that I would like to see in terms of features concerns the mobile application. Most users of our switches are now on the web-based interface and I feel it's time for Meraki to start developing the mobile app more seriously, because it's currently not up to standard and a lot of people aren't using it.

I've been using Meraki MS Switches for about six to eight years.

For the cloud license model, the stability of the switches largely depends on your Internet capability. For example, you will want to have both primary and secondary backbone connections for the Internet, and that's it. The stability of the hardware is fine.

I would say that it's scalable, especially in the sense that there are models up to at least 10 Mbps and at the upper range there are 10 Gbps copper switches. Then there are switches that support 1 Gbps fiber as well as 40 Gbps fiber (via QSFP). Thus, there are enough models to offer the scalability that you need as far as bandwidth is concerned.

There are fixed-model switches and also some older model switches to choose from, so it depends upon the customer's requirements to decide on their own solution. When it comes to scalability, there are various options available. 

Cisco is always top-notch when it comes to technical support. It's reassuring to know that they will be there to assist you in solving your issues. Of course, there are sometimes priority cases, but even then they make sure to be available to help you resolve the issue. It doesn't matter if you're a customer, a partner, or a service provider, they provide an excellent technical support service.

Positive

The setup is very easy. It's typically a one-touch provisioning process and it's like not traditional switches where you have to put in a lot of effort bringing the switch up and running with a basic configuration. With Meraki switches, all you need is a status page where you can log in locally. As soon as you connect it to the Internet, the device is on board and on the cloud, and you can start playing around with it.

You don't need a lot of technical staff to implement the switches. One engineer is capable of doing it alone and, in fact, most of the time it just takes a single team member to deploy. Naturally, this would be an individual who knows the product inside and out, to be able to deploy without anyone's help. You also need a few remote hands who can rack and stack the equipment, but as far as the configuration is concerned, only one engineer can do everything.

I had one scenario where I had 120 devices divided into three different models. Four of them were Layer 3 fiber switches which acted as the core switches and 16 of them were fiber switches for distribution, also with Layer 3 capability. Then we had almost a hundred devices acting as access switches, which is normally Layer 2 PoE-capable switches where we have a couple of SFP ports for the uplink. All of this a single person would be able to deploy in five working days, at eight hours a day.

When it comes to maintenance, it depends on the size of the infrastructure. In a retail mall, for example, you will have hardly 150 switches, compared to a big hotel or apartment building where you will have more than 200-300 switches. With those kinds of deployments, you will have to have multiple people to address the multiple issues with the guests.

There is a lot of scope for ROI with Meraki, mainly because your headcount will go down. With Meraki switches, you don't need to have too many people around to manage the infrastructure, and you don't have to travel much to maintain multiple branches across the globe.

Additionally, you won't need to spend much in terms of reporting tools, log tools (e.g. log collectors), or anything like that because everything is included in the product. There's a lot of sophistication and features that Meraki brings in terms of Layer 7 application visibility. You really have complete control over the end-users infrastructure.

If you buy a license for one switch, it will include the licensing for the device RMA, device failure warranty, technical support, and everything else. Also covered is support for software updates for future releases. It's a single license for everything and there's nothing that customers need to pay in addition to the license.

I would rate Meraki MS Switches an eight out of ten.

The main thing that we try to take advantage of is the web console. The administration console that is on the cloud is great. That allows the customer to take full advantage of metrics, configuration, and control of the device.

Overall, the switches are really good.

The initial setup is straightforward.

I would like to know if Meraki is going to offer IP phones again. 

The lead times can be long in terms of actually getting the hardware. 

I do work with the Cisco distributor, the main distributor here in Bolivia. I am in charge of developing projects for the customers. I've been dealing with Meraki for five years now.

Most customer networks are small networks. In Bolivia, we don't have very big companies or corporate networks. Most clients have between 100 and 300 users or endpoints and no more than that.

I haven't needed technical support so far. All I've used so far is device replacement when something fails. In terms of Meraki support, so far, I'm not very well involved with that. Most of the time, we have been dealing with any configurations by ourselves.

I do work with various Cisco devices. 

I do work with the whole set of switches, sometimes related to the corporate or enterprise networks. Sometimes I do work for the service provider, however, most of the time, I handle the Catalyst Series switches with enterprises.

It's really straightforward to set up and very easy to get the device up and on the network. It's a really easy process.

Most of the time, we deal with annual licenses. Typically, there's just the standard fee, although some organizations use the enterprise option. 

We are a Cisco partner. 

I'd rate the solution at nine out of ten.

My advice to new users is related to all hardware provisioning and that is to be patient. There's often a delay from the factory when releasing the devices for the customer. Sometimes the lead times are extensive, and sometimes people here don't want to keep moving with the project when it takes too long to get the device. I know that that's not a factory problem; it's a general problem with all electronic devices.

We use it for network connectivity in our organization. We use it across all of our locations.

It is cloud-based. So, the software is updated to the latest firmware on a regular basis by Cisco. We have a private cloud.

I like the support, and basically, that's why I'm using Meraki by Cisco.

I've had some hardware failure issues on the POE side on several switches across the years. There seems to be a problem with the POE ports of their unit system.

I have been using this solution for probably seven or eight years.

They're pretty good. I would give them a 10 out of 10.

If you're looking for cloud switches, I would definitely recommend including them in your evaluation because they're really good. 

I would rate Meraki MS Switches a nine out of 10.